Speaker and Writer—Changing the World

An Obsolete Society?

“What appears to be truth to the one may appear to be error to the other.” – Gandhi

More than 10 years working in public education across the United States and Canada has taught me a few things. Sure, I figured out what works for me when I teach students and teachers and administrators, and sure, I learned about the pressures and realities of everyday school functioning. I have learned is that Bill Gates was right when he said back in 2005 that schools, as we know them today in general, are obsolete. Worse still, they are oppressive and compulsory, which has always been a dangerous ignitor among tinderbox nations with aspirational lower- and middle-classes.

But my conclusion may be a little more rough: Schools are just the part of the iceberg we can see.

Our society has relied on adultism to enforce adultcentrism for more than 100 years, and now the fruits of that labor is coming to bear. Child abuse, compulsory schools, the Draft, truancy laws, religious norms, policing practices, and a smear of other tools have been used consciously and unconsciously for more than five generations to oppress, suppress and otherwise keep children and youth “in their place,” which has frequently been less-than-human, and is constantly less-than-citizen.

There are synchromonious emergences happening that will undo this negative reality:

Readily-accessible technology, including cell phones, laptops and the Internet

Increasing socially estute teaching in schools, at home and throughout the community

Vested adults who are concerned about adultism, youth rights and youth inclusion

Powerful young people who are acting more assertively, pro-actively and consciously than all previous generations

This is the future of our country and our world, and whether or not we like it is largely irrelevant. The simple fact-of-the-matter is that young people possess more positive power than ever before, and as Gandhi’s satyagraha taught us, there is no more powerful force than love and that positive power.

Let’s embrace that power, and that urgency. We have to embrace that urgency.

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One thought on “An Obsolete Society?”

Schools are used to keep more than young people in their place. Schools are used to erase the realms of possibility that enabled working-class Americans to transcend their “place” in the days prior to compulsory schooling. Schools are used to keep the respective classes, sexes and races in their “places” and perpetuate a racist, sexist, classist, capitalist order.